OK, so I just have to quote fully from the Universal investor call. It's just too good not to share:
"We love the Theme Park business. We think there’s a real opportunity to increase the pace of new attractions. We have far too few hotel rooms in Orlando and the one thing we know, when people stay in our hotels, they stay – they visit our parks an extra day or two – and so we have 2,400 hotel rooms. We think we have room and capacity for 10,000 hotel rooms. So you’ll see us add attractions at a more rapid rate, add hotel rooms at a more rapid rate, and we think the returns in that business are great and there’s great running room."
And later:
"Well. Our park business continues to be strong. We’re on a cadence now of opening one attraction in Florida and one attraction in California every year. We opened Transformers, the Transformers attraction in Hollywood two years ago – and it was so successful we sped up the development of Transformers in Orlando and opened that in the beginning of this summer. We have two parks in Orlando, but the park where we opened Transformers has been up 20% most weeks since that attraction opened. And our feeling is that if we open the right kind of attractions – they have to be well executed, they have to be things that are easy and created a market – that we can really grow these businesses.
"The thing that we’re most excited about, what really transformed our park in Orlando was opening Harry Potter, which happened a few years ago. We’re opening a second Harry Potter attraction in Orlando, which I think is one of the most creative ideas I’ve ever seen in the theme park business. The first attraction is in one of our gates – it’s called Islands of Adventure. The second attraction is in the other gate and the way you get from one gate to the second gate is you take a train, and the train is the Hogwarts Express, and so the actual transition or the movement from one gate to another gate is part of the attraction which has never been done before and it’s a wonderful, creative idea. That opens next spring. We think that’s going to be a very big draw. And then we’re opening Harry Potter in Hollywood and in Japan.
"So I think our feeling is, first of all, the economy is seems to be positive for theme park attendance and people are coming to Florida and Southern California. But within what’s going on a macro level if we can continue to invest in innovative attractions, get the right kind of marketing that explains to people what Universal Studios is – that it’s a destiny, a family destination in and of itself, not an add-on attraction for somebody who’s spent three or four days someplace else – that we can continue to grow that business and that’s our plan."
I hope laurels are comfortable because WDW has been resting on theirs for far too long.
